Live from AKL!

[Iggipolka]

We just checked into AKL this evening, staying until January 15th and as usual, it's wonderful! I so love this resort. We're staying on DVC points and Jan 7-12 have a 1-bedroom, 5th floor savvannah view (Sunset Savvanah) and from the 12 - 15th go upstairs to CL.

The room is spotless, comfortable and super quiet. The animals are out on the savvanah and really fun to watch from the balcony. We had a great quick dinner at The Mara (fried shrimp for my DW and the African Stew for me), a lovely relaxing whirlpool bath and now are settling off to bed before a busy day tomorrow. Flying from California is an all day ordeal, so we're going to rest up to play tomorrow.

Woohoo! We're at WDW!

 

[momatater]

Yeah!!! A live report from AKL!

We will be there Jan 23rd, so I'm looking forward to hearing all about what's happening there!

Can you tell us about the construction? That is the one thing I'm a little worried about when we arrive.

Enjoy your trip and can't wait to read more!!

 

[Lilolvr]

Have a terrific time!

 

[Iggipolka]

Good morning everyone. We had a blissful night sleep in the o-so-comphy Disney bed. There was some beep beep beep noise of construction around 7:30am, but that stopped by 8:00. I think that there's one guy who just likes driving backwards to make the nifty noise.

There are lots of animals onn the Sunset Savannah. We've seen several zebra, cranes (who make the most interesting noise) and antelope type creatures. Oh..and the Ostridge who is awesome to watch.

Quick breakfast and then off to the Marathon Expo today with dinner at LTT this evening.

 

[Iggipolka]

We had a great day today. We went to the Marathon Expo at the World Wide of Sports and wandered around there for several hours. I've never been there before, so it was great to see the place. We got a number of fun and interesting fitness items too.
After a delicious lunch there, we came back to AKL for a bit of a rest before heading off to MK for dinner at LTT. Yummy!
We watched Spectro and Wishes and had an excellent CM, Mike, for the Jungle Cruise. He was awesome.
The only bad part of the day..was the 30 minute wait to get on a bus to get back to AKL! Wow, I've never had to wait that long.
Great day though and leaving MK always makes me a little sad b/c I know it's one day less for our Disney trip.
Tomorrow, AK!

 

[west&east]

Thanks for the report! Have a great time!

 

[Iggipolka]

Another wonderful day at AKL and WDW! Being from California, we always have a hard time adjusting to Florida time, so we are never rope drop people. Usually, I'm up earlier than DW and anxious to get to the parks. So, this morning when the baby in my belly woke me up at 8am and my DW was snoring, I wasn't too surprised.

The construction noise was minimal this morning, just a few beeps from the trucks across the savvanah. With the balcony doors closed, the noise is minimal. The animals are off of the savannah and in the barn from about 8-10am. When they get let back out, they are so cute as we've seen a herd of wilderbeasts running across the grass, bucking and jumping. They seem quite happy.

Anyway, I laid in our comphy bed for awhile, until I couldn't stand it anymore and woke DW up. She had a cold prior to our leaving for WDW and apparently felt worse this morning. So, after a quick breakfast in our villa (Love DVC), I headed off to AK and let her rest.

I love touring WDW by myself. It's fun to share the experience with someone, but sometimes I love to have the freedom to do what I want, when I want it, without worrying that someone else is bored or whatever. The bus to AK took forever to arrive at AKL and by time it got to the stop, it was standing room only. I was very surprised that it was so crowded! AK was very busy today.

They also still had some Christmas decorations up! The big tree was still up and in random places in the park, were decorations around the stores. They are very pretty, but mid-January is probably time to take the Christmas stuff down!

Being 5 months pregnant, the fun rides are off limits to me, so I concentrated on the animal trails and the shows. Flights of Wonder is my favorite bird show ever, although, I'm ready for the tour guide bit to end. I then wandered off to Asia to check out the tigers and huge fruit bats. Those bats are freaky! I can't believe that there is no glass or anything separating us from them. It was really cool out, so the tigers were quite active, playing on the rocks and bouncing on logs. They are awesome!

After I got through the trail, my DW called and said she'd meet me by the front of the park. We had a 1pm reservation at Tusker House, and it was only noon, so we had time to see the huge gorillas before lunch. The meercats are also a favorite and several of them were wrestling around in the sand, too cute!

The last time we ate at Tusker House, it was a counter service, so this was a new experience. We will absolutely be back. We love Boma and Tusker House is a close second now. We had a great server (Joe) and loved the food selections. I could have just eaten the curry vegetable samosas and been completely happy.

After lunch, my DW was feeling worse, so she headed back to AK to rest and I went the Nemo show. LOVE the Nemo show. I had priority seating to it because we had a 1pm reservation at Tusker House, so I got my pick of seats in the theater. Perfect!

After the excellent show, I was ready to head back, but wandered into the parade instead! Woohoo! I had never seen the parade at AK and it is soo good! It's completely different from any other parade at WDW and I highly recommend it. The way they construct the animal floats is incredible.

After the parade, I followed the crush of people out to the buses and waited a good 30 minutes for a AKV bus. What is up with the slow bus service back to the closest resort?

I got back around 5:30 and headed to The Mara for dinner. Their pita sandwich is very tasty and they are quite accommodating with special requests. I asked for extra yogurt sauce and fresh hot fries, I got it with a smile. I got a piece of carrot cake, which I saved for later. My DW requested some jello, so I got that for her as a snack credit.

Once I got back to the room, my DW was up and hungry, so we headed back down to the Mara and got her a pita sandwich, fries and a tasty raspberry smoothie. The very nice cashier gave us a sample of the pina colada smoothie too. Mmmmm...almost as good as the real thing.

Since my DW still isn't feeling all that great, it's going to be a quiet night at "home". I'm planning on taking a lovely bath and eat my carrot cake afterward. My DW is watching the flat screen TV in the bedroom and since we have another one in the living room, there's no arguing over what show to watch!

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to get up earlier, but our plans are going to depend on how the DW feels. If she's up to it, we're going to DHS to play TSMM. If she's not feeling well, I'll had over to EPCOT for the day. So..we'll see what happens!

 

[Donald is #1]

Great report! I hope that your DW is feeling better tomorrow.

 

[RachelTori]

I'm loving your live report, Iggipolka! I'm so jealous!

Isn't the parade at AK wonderful?! We always left the park by mid-day and never saw the parade until about 18 months ago. Now I can't get enough of it! I loved the CS at Tusker House, but I love the new restaurant even more! (close 2nd to Boma!)

Thanks for posting and sharing your great time with us! I hope your DW is feeling better.

 

[Iott Family]

I just love live reports! Im so glad I stumbled upon this! We will be at AKL on the 31st and we are sooo sooo excited!!!!!!!!

AK's parade is excellent. I love that it has such a different feel and stays true to the park it's in! I can easily miss the parade at DHS and even the MK one but I always have to catch the AK parade every time we are in the park!

Im really following your words on dining at Mara. So keep posting those reviews! The fruit smoothy sounds delicious! Are you on DDP? Is a smoothy considered a drink with a cs credit or is it a snack credit?

What do the refillable mugs look like? Have they switched over yet?

 

[MarkinNM]

VERY NICE!!!!

AKL is a must for us, keep up the reports, I LOVE the updates

 

[Flossbolna]

Great report! I hope your DW will feel better soon. Have a great stay!

 

[PrincessPaczki]

Thank you for the live report. I am really enjoying it.

 

[maine girl]

How is the construction on the villas next door going?

 

[Iott Family]

Keep checking back to see what Op has to report for today but nothing! Hopefully OP didnt get hit by the virus!

 

[Iggipolka]

Hi everyone!
Thanks for reading along.

We are on the DDP and find it to be so cost effective for us. We love to eat and the baby in my belly demands that I eat nearly constantly, so the DDP is awesome for pregnant ladies. *grin*

The food at the Mara is so yummy. I have food porn, but I neglected to bring my flash card reader with me. Woops! Pictures of food will have to wait until we get home. A smoothie at the Mara can be either your drink or as a dessert. My DW got it as her drink and got a fruit salad as her dessert, which we ate with breakfast the next day.

They have not changed the look of the refillable mugs. They are still the white with blue design on them from last year. We were going to bring our old ones (shameless people that we are), but sadly forgot them. It's ok though, since with the DDP, we get a drink with each meal and I shipped down a case of water for $7.00 from Costco.

Ok..on to today's fun!

I woke DW up at 8am, happy and bouncy and ready to get going. Weellllll....we left AKL at 10:00. Oh well, at least she felt good enough to come with me for awhile. We headed over to DHS (I still call it MGM in my head) to play our favorite game, TSMM! Woohoo! We had studied the cheat videos and were all prepared for how to max our score. We would have done really well, except my DW was zonked out on Sudafed and was pretty fuzzy headed. It's hard to concentrate and aim when drugged. Ahh well, we had fun anyway. The standby line was about 20 minutes long, which is great for TSMM. I haven't seen it that low ever. We rode twice and did better the second time around. That's still my favorite ride/game and we're planning on heading back to DHS later this week.

After TSMM, we were going to go and see the Indiana Jones Stunt Show, but it was at 12:40 and we had lunch reservations at SciFi at 1:00. DW was also starting to drag quite a bit. So, we went and did the Great Movie Ride instead. Has anyone ever gotten the cowboy as the live CM? I have yet to have that happen, we always get the Mobster. Still a fun ride. I think it's time to update the film clips at the end though.

I keep forgetting to mention the weather. Today was absolutely spectacular and really has been the first day since we got here where I would feel comfortable going swimming. It was beautiful, sunny and around 80 degrees. Totally lovely.

We checked in a bit early for our SciFi reservation and were seated just before our ADR time. While waiting, I scoped out the new American Idol attraction just across from the entrance. They were testing it on CM's today, so every one in awhile, we'd hear some screeching..er..singing coming from behind the wall. It officially opens Feb 14th. What a nice way to surprise your sweetie on Valentines Day, by singing him/her a love song at the American Idol Experience.

I know that SciFi has gotten some pretty cruddy reviews, but we've always been happy with the food. Now, the frigid temperature of the building and the extremely long wait time for your food, is pretty annoying. I can overlook that though because they have new movie clips! Woohoo! The Zombie Woman attacks the Men from Mars! I got a Lilo Milk which was milk in a sippy cup with a glow cube in it! Too fun to have green, then red, then blue milk. *giggle* I can be such a 6 year old at WDW sometimes. For my meal I had a cheeseburger with cheddar cheese, grilled onions and mushrooms (Sorry Brenda) and a side of onion rings instead of fries. The burger was cooked exactly as I wanted and the onion rings were super crispy and very hot. My DW got the Steak-n-Blue salad, which is her favorite there. It's grilled steak over a wedge of lettuce with blue cheese and blue cheese dressing. She also got a chocolate shake to drink. For dessert I had a hot fudge sundae and she got the chocolate peanut butter cake. While I loved my hot fudge sundae (how can that be anything but good?), she wasn't thrilled with her dessert. She likes really creamy peanut butter and she said it was pretty dry.

After lunch, my DW headed back to ALK to rest and I took the ferry over to the Boardwalk and then walked to Epcot. I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the countries. I love being able to meander through each country, visiting the shops and watching the shows. I take my time and absorb the atmosphere and the different feeling that each country evokes. There are so many interesting little details to notice, if you slow down.

I started in France and got to see the "Comic Chef" show, with the guy who balances chairs on wine bottles. Wow..he was really high up there, 5 or 6 chairs high and then standing on his head! Impressive! Aurora was in the garden, so I got my picture taken with her. A tour group from some warm country much south from here (ahem) tried to butt in front of me with 6 young kids. I tried to tell them that I was in line, but I don't think they expected an adult to be alone in line to get her picture taken with a Princess. So, I scooted out of line and then got back in front of them. This caused quite a bit of conversation among them and I don't think that they fully understood my explanation. Thankfully the CM had noticed and took my hand and lead me to Aurora. Phew! Aurora couldn't have been more gracious and very respectful of an adult wanting a picture with her. She was very sweet and took some time to give me parenting advice: smile at your child every day, teach her/him to be polite and kind to others and always believe in magic. Rather sweet.

So, after France was Morocco which is my favorite pavilion. I'm a belly dancer, so I always have to poke through the store in Morocco to see if there's any new belly dance stuff. I also like to watch the dancer there, although the last few times I've seen her, she seems bored. I think some new material may help. It does get old dancing to the same music all the time. Anyway, there's a new museum in Morocco that I highly recommend. It showcases the jewelry that people in Morocco wear and is so beautiful. The building is lovely too, check out the ceiling!

When we were at WDW in October, I did a pick-a-pearl in Japan and wanted to bring it back with me to get it put in a setting. Well, I forgot my pearl, so I had to pick another one! Just as it got to be my turn, I started feeling really dizzy and saw sparks of light in my eyes. I knew I was going to faint! I've never fainted before, so this was a bit freaky. I wanted to sit down, but the only place to do so was the floor and I didn't want to cause a scene, so I stepped outside. As soon as I hit the cooler air, I felt better. I think I just got over heated. I have a little oven in my belly anyway and it was warm in the store. I went to the bathroom, splashed a little water on my face and felt fine again. Phew! That was a little scary. I did go back to the store in Japan and got a small, but quite pretty 6.25mm pink pearl that I had put into a silver cage pendent. I'm happy with it.

I skipped the American Adventure because I know that my DW wants to see the show there. We haven't seen it yet! Amazing in the number of times we've been to WDW that we haven't seen the show, but we haven't. That's the nice thing about WDW, there's always something new to experience.

I headed over to Germany and got a big pretzel (snack credit!) and ate about 1/2. I just wanted to get something in my stomach in case that was part of the fainting problems. The pretzels you get in Germany have a buttery taste that isn't there in the pretzels you can get at the other pretzel stands. Kinda interesting and reminds me of the pretzel bread in Canada. While I was munching, the clock in Germany opened up and the two mechanical kids rang the bell. Well, they tried to ring the bell! I think that the hammers have been removed from the kids because there was no sound! It was pretty funny.

I think Norway is next. I can't do the ride there right now, but it was fun watching the boat peek out of the tunnel. I did stop in the bakery to visit the goodies there. They don't have School Bread out on display anymore! What's up with that? I said hello to the Sweet Pretzels and promised to visit them again later in the week. The CM behind the counter was quite amused. I also saw where the ship in Norway used to be! I miss the ship, now there's a big empty garden spot and it just looks like something should be there.

I walked through Africa, I never stop here and I'm not sure why. It just seems to be less of a pavilion and more of a place to walk through to get to the next country. Maybe that's just me.

In China, I caught the middle of the acrobat show. I've never seen them before and was quite impressed! Their flexibility is absolutely freaky! I also saw the China Movie, again, a new one for me. It is very well done and makes me want to visit China, so I guess it worked! There is also an exhibit of the tombs that have been excavated, which was completely awe inspiring. I would like to go back and spend some more time there.

Mexico! Woohoo! I arrived in time to hear the band and then take the Mexico Small World ride. It's cheesy and silly, but I still like it. I liked it better before they added Donald to it, but it's still good. I wandered around the shops for a bit, but since I live in California, we can get the same stuff back home.

By this time it was around 5pm and I knew I had to leave Epcot by 6 in order to get back to AKL for our Boma ADR at 7:15, so I headed over to Future World. Nemo was calling me with zero wait time, so I swam under the ocean and now have "It's a BIIIIIG Blue World..." stuck in my head for the rest of eternity. I visited with Crush, who seemed to be having a bad day and was amusingly sarcastic with a couple of adults who asked questions. He was good with the kids though. I'm not sure how much longer that Crush will be working at Epcot. *giggle* It was fun though. I wanted to ride Soarin', but my DW called to find out where I was, so I just stopped at MouseGear on the way out and got a CD of park music, before heading to the bus.

I know that people have complained that AKL is so far away from the parks. Well, I got on the bus at 6:26 and was at AKL at 6:36! Woo! A 10 minute bus ride is certainly welcome anywhere!

DW was feeling much better this evening. yeay! We headed down to Boma and had a scrumptious dinner. We were seated a bit early and happily munched through soups, salads and other tasty goodies. No Zebra Domes for me, due to the alcohol content. However, the banana bread pudding with vanilla sauce was soooo tasty. DW started feeling more crummy again after dinner, so she headed back up to the room.

I went out to the Savannah in the middle of the resort and saw the funniest thing ever! A tiny antelope like critter was herding about 5 Zebra away from a pile of hay! He circled around the zebra until they all got into a bunch and then slowly advanced towards them until, as a group, they moved away from the hay. Once they were away from the hay, the antelope started to eat it! At that point, the zebra seemed to catch on to what was happening and they moved back towards the hay. However, the antelope wasn't having any of that, and circled around them and moved them away in the other direction! OMG, I was laughing so hard. Normally those tiny antelope are so timid and here this one had developed a semi-predator identity and the zebra were letting him get away with it!

We have an early night tonight because tomorrow we have to get up at 6am to catch a 7:15am bus to the TTC in order to get to MK. Due to the marathon, there are no direct buses to MK and they stop running buses to the TTC at 8am! We have reservations for the Keys to the Kingdom tour tomorrow that starts at 8:45. So, we're going to be quite early. Ahh well, better than late! I can't wait for the tour too!

Thanks again for reading and questions are more than welcome!

 

[Iggipolka]

Hmm..strange, I'm not sure why the text is different in my previous post.
Anyway, I forgot to mention a couple things.
1. I had been super worried about the NoroVirus that is supposed to be going on at WDW. So far, so good! I haven't seen any signs of it and both my DW and I have been free of any GI upset. I'm now going to knock on every piece of wood furniture in this villa...and then wash my hands.

2. The construction at Kindani is going along great! When we were here in October, it didn't look like it was going to be finished in time. However, there has been a dramatic amount of work done on the buildings and they look fantastic. I can't wait until our trip Feb 2010 when we'll be staying in the new buildings!

 

[Flossbolna]

Wow, it sounds like a really great day. And wait times seem to be very manageable: 20 min at TSM after 10 am is nearly too good to believe! I hope you have a lot of fun on the KTTK Tour. We did this last February and it was an absolute highlight of our trip!!!

 

[momatater]

Sounds like you're having a blast! I'm glad to hear your DW is feeling better. I hope she stays that way for the rest of the trip!!

Thanks for the update on the construction. I can't wait to hear about the Keys to the Kingdom tour, we are scheduled to do it on the 27th! Also want to say thanks for taking time out of your vacay to keep us all updated!! Much appreciated!

Have a great day!!

 

[Donald is #1]

Sounds like yo had another great day. I'm glad to hear that DW was starting to feel better.

I'll have to try Sci-Fi on my trip in December. It has been a long time since I have eaten there and your burger sounded really good.